Page 192 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

The loss of Fannie

not far off; in that letter, which after her passing I found tucked away
in one of the dishes, she wrote “remember my good points and
forget my faults.” Her faults are to me as dear as her good points.
In the months since she passed away I have been working at hard
physical labor, just to distract my mind from the thought of her. But
the loneliness only intensifies, a longing for the thing that is beyond
natural laws. I am unsettled; I have no future, any man of my age has
no future, but I have a few more years to live, and my problem is
how to arrange myself, to organize my food and shelter. Everyone I
meet gives advice, but who knows my feelings, my temperament, my
habits? Had I been poor and destitute like many old people become
in the end, I think I would have been much happier now: I would
enter the county farm and live a normal life.
I have a good home to live in, a little money and a small pension
to make me comfortable until I disintegrate in a few years. Yet it is
hard to be alone in a big house, lonely and exposed to robbers and
thieves. To sell the house and move into a one-room apartment, just
remaining there most of the time locked up like a prisoner: I would
better die or commit a crime and be locked up in a prison where I
would have food and shelter. To rent out the house to a couple and
have one bedroom for myself, as some advise me, is also a hard
problem—finding people who will not take over the house and
dominate me. Why should I suffer inconvenience, having friction
with strangers whose character I do not know?
The natural way would be to find a second mate. It sounded
unnatural to my children when I mentioned that thought, an idea I
cannot myself get acquainted with. It looks painful to me to go live
with a woman. Who is not the question. At this age one is not
romantic and does not overlook faults of the other person as in
youth. One looks for companionship, and the other party does not
have the qualities or habits and character that one expects, and one
who has only a few years to live at most does not have the time to
mold and build up habits, to make a good team. Besides, when one is
poor one’s children are glad to have their aged parent enter an old
folks home or marry some old woman with some source of support,
but when one has a home and a few dollars, children are not so
anxious to have their parents take another mate. An economic
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